How much do you achieve each day? What do you actually deliver in terms of results? After all, results matter don’t they? We’re paid to deliver results, aren’t we? It’s all about productivity surely?

Being busy is not the same as being productive. Most people know that but still struggle to improve their productivity.

Do you ever feel that you could be more productive? Do you ever wonder how you might improve your productivity?

If so, this is for you. Here is Brian Tracy with some great tips for becoming more productive.

I think Brian Tracy always offers great advice and in this short video he offers some reals pearls of wisdom. Simple ideas that can really increase your productivity if you apply them regularly. Recommended viewing.

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Betty Marion White Ludden, known professionally as Betty White, is an American actor and comedian born in 1922. She’s had the longest television career of any female entertainer. Not only is she an actor, she is also one of the first women to have control both in front of and behind the camera and she is recognized as the first woman to produce a sitcom. She is probably best known for her roles in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls and, more recently, Hot in Cleveland. However she’s had a successful career spanning more than 75 years and she’s received eight Emmy awards in various categories. And she continues to work despite her age. What makes her interesting for me is her positive attitude. Whenever you hear her speak or give advice she’s always so positive and that’s a quality I admire in people. So here are 15 quotes by Betty White to illustrate my point.

I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It’s that simple. ~Betty White

It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. ~Betty White

I think it’s your mental attitude. So many of us start dreading age in high school and that’s a waste of a lovely life. ‘Oh… I’m 30, oh, I’m 40, oh, 50.’ Make the most of it. ~Betty White

I have a two-story house and a bad memory, so I’m up and down those stairs all the time. That’s my exercise. ~Betty White

The bottom line is, I’m blessed with good health. On top of that, I don’t go around thinking ‘Oh, I’m 90, I better do this or I better do that.’ I’m just Betty. I’m the same Betty that I’ve always been. Take it or leave it. ~Betty White

Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren’t going to get rid of me that way. ~Betty White

Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, ‘I’m going to be 30 – oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all! ~Betty White

I really don’t care with whom you sleep. I just care what kind of a decent human being you are. ~Betty White

I’m having the time of my life and the fact that I’m still working – how lucky can you get? I’m 90 years old and still able to work as much as I do. That’s a privilege. ~Betty White

I didn’t know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. ~Betty White

The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you’re going before you even start. That’s a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It’s much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more – I want to say ‘sophisticated.’ ~Betty White

A lot of people think this is a goody-two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother’s knee it’s better to appreciate what’s happening. I think we kind of talk ourselves into the negative sometimes. ~Betty White

If you’re walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see a man walking street-side, to protect the lady from traffic. I grew up with that, and I hate to see something like that get lost. I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. If I sound old-fashioned, it’s because I’m as old as I am! But it’s just polite. ~Betty White

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The late Bob Marley was of course a Jamaican singer-songwriter who became an international musical and cultural icon. His music blended mostly reggae, ska and rocksteady rhythms into compositions with a very commercial sound. However beneath the commercial sound were lyrics with real bite. And that in my opinion is why his songs remain popular to this day. To have risen from humble beginnings to have the international impact Bob Marley had, then you have to be someone very special and he was, certainly in musical terms. Here are 15 quotes by Bob Marley to remind you of what the world has lost.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold. ~Bob Marley

Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living? ~Bob Marley

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. ~Bob Marley

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively. ~Bob Marley

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight. ~Bob Marley

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live! ~Bob Marley

God sent me on earth. He send me to do something, and nobody can stop me. If God want to stop me, then I stop. Man never can. ~Bob Marley

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I must confess until now I was not familiar with the work of African American comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley. I stumbled on her work by accident on YouTube and I was intrigued by her. So naturally I went in search of some information about her, as well as some quotes by Moms Mabley.

Born in 1894, Moms Mabley was one of 16 children and like most African Americans of her day, particularly women she’d had a tough early life. At the encouragement of her grandmother, she ran away and joined a travelling minstrel show where she sang and entertained.

Her stage persona was that of an older, dishevelled woman. Certainly she was a woman on whom life had left its mark. For instance by age of 14, she had been raped twice (at age 11, by an elderly black man, and age 13, by a white sheriff) and had two children who were given up for adoption.

At the age of 27 she came out as a lesbian becoming one of the first openly gay comedians. That wouldn’t have been easy in the less enlightened age in which she lived and worked.

So if you’re not familiar with Moms Mabley, I recommend you take a closer look at her work, but not before you read these 15 quotes by Moms Mabley.

If you want to be successful, then you have to master time management. Successful people are always good time managers. They would never allow other people to waste their time and nor should you.

Time is our most precious resource. It is more important than money because, whilst we can always get more money, we can never get more time. One hour spent is one hour we no longer have to spend.

How often do you hear people say, “I’d love to do that but I don’t have the time.” However the fact is that we all have exactly the same amount of time; 168 hours a week. It all comes down to our priorities and our determination to use our time wisely.

How we choose to prioritise and allocate our time will have a significant bearing on how successful we become. No savvy person would waste their money, nor would they allow other people to waste their money for them, would they? And yet people frequently waste their own time and allow other people to waste their time for them as well.

Why would anyone think it reasonable to waste their time? And why would anyone allow someone else to encroach on their time, resulting in more wasted seconds, minutes and hours.

Just because someone asks for a piece of your time, doesn’t mean you have to agree to their request. You have to ask yourself first whether it would be the best use of your time. The supplementary question would be whether there’s any obligation on your part? Every second is precious, so you have to be miserly when considering requests for even a small part of your time.

And before you begin every day make sure you have a short list of all your absolutely ‘must do’ items and then make sure you get them done. When you’re working, your focus should be on what you’re meant to deliver. Those things that will allow you to add the most value.

However remember this also; a life well lived is a life with balance. You work to live and not the opposite. So when the day is done, make sure you have a little time left over for those who matter most to you. After all, success is very nice but it wouldn’t mean much without family and friends.

Here are six quotes which underline the importance of time management.

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over? ~John Wooden

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent. ~Barbara Bush

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What is failure? We hear the word so often but what does it really mean? It is so easy to be crushed by a sense of failure and yet actually there is no such thing as failure. There are only outcomes we didn’t want and lessons to be learned.

It’s not about how many times you get knocked down; it’s how many times you can get back up and have another go until you get it right. You cannot truly enjoy victory when it comes, if you have never known defeat first. You cannot achieve anything without the experience of at least the occasional failure along the way.

Before anyone was a success, they started out as a complete beginner. The road from beginner to achiever and master of your craft is inevitably littered with mistakes and failures. These are significant only for the lessons they teach us.

If you’re determined, persistent and hungry for success, you’ll just keep trying until you get where you want to go. If you really want to succeed, you’ll learn the lessons and then find a way to achieve your goal or realise your dream. If not you’ll just make excuses.

Never allow yourself to be overwhelmed by any sense of failure. It’s not fatal, at most it’s just a minor setback. Above all, never, ever give up until you get to where you were trying to go.

Success can be yours if you want it badly enough. And remember this; it is better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.

Here are 6 quotes to help you put failure into perspective.

I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. ~Michael Jordan

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~Thomas A. Edison

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. ~Steve Jobs

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default. ~JK Rowling

Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday. ~Wilma Rudolph

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What is fear? Often we can be paralysed by fear and yet it is only the body’s natural mechanism for heightening our sense of awareness in times of potential danger. It sharpens our sense of the risks involved in given situations. By definition risk is simply the possibility of an outcome we really don’t want.

However risk and reward have a direct correlation. No risk; no reward. Yes, by taking a risk, you might end up with an undesirable outcome but equally you might just achieve a desirable prize.

Our sense of fear should make us tread carefully of course but it shouldn’t stop us treading at all. It’s all about weighing up the percentages and taking a sensible approach to any given situation. Avoiding unnecessary risks but taking calculated risks.

If we are to be successful, we must face up to our fear. We must recognise the reason for our fear but that fear should not control us. We should control the fear. We should feel the fear but do it anyway.

Never let fear stop you having a go. The alternative would be to look back with regret at what might have been. And who wants that?

It’s better to be someone who can look themselves in the eye and know they always gave it their best shot regardless of how they were feeling at the time.

Arguably in recent years, there has been a significant improvement in the availability of opportunities for women, particularly in show-business. And that’s how it should be of course. Nevertheless we have to admire those strong and very talented women from previous generations who managed to succeed at their chosen profession, despite a system designed to keep them very much in their place. One such example is the American actress, director and producer Penny Marshall.

She rose to fame in the 1970s for her role in the hit US television sitcom Laverne & Shirley. Playing the role of Laverne DeFazio, she was very funny and she created a character that has proved to be one of the standout comedy characters from the golden age of situation comedy.

Penny Marshall then went on to become a very successful director of films, an area of entertainment still heavily dominated by men to this day.

She’s clearly a very smart lady. So here are 15 quotes by Penny Marshall which reflect her personal philosophy.

Mae West was one of the most controversial movie stars of her day, making comedy out of the prudish, conventional mores of that time. However Depression-era audiences loved her for it. Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, New York in 1893 she was an actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades. Some might dismiss her for her light-hearted bawdy double entendres and breezy sexual independence but she knew what she was doing and she was clearly very smart. She was a woman who lived life on her own terms. Asked about the various efforts to impede her career, Mae West replied, “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.” Here are another 15 quotes by Mae West, many of which will make you smile.

Amy Poehler is an American actress, voice artist, comedian, director, producer and writer. She is also an inspiration to women everywhere. Probably best known for her appearances on the US television series Saturday Night Live, she has a reputation for being a woman with the determination to contribute significantly in her own right rather than being content with a decorative, background role supporting leading men. This is a woman who is smart, very talented and who knows where she’s going. We would all do well following her example. Here are 15 quotes by Amy Poehler which reflect her philosophy and her approach to succeeding in a tough profession.

The earlier you learn that you should focus on what you have, and not obsess about what you don’t have, the happier you will be. ~Amy Poehler

I cannot stress enough that the answer to life’s questions is often in people’s faces. Try putting your iPhones down once in a while, and look in people’s faces. People’s faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry, or nauseous or asleep. ~Amy Poehler

I’d say any good set or any comedy that I’ve worked on, that’s worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, ‘What if you say this? What about this?’ ~Amy Poehler

Any actor or actress that tells you that they don’t watch their stuff is lying. ~Amy Poehler

I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do. ~Amy Poehler

You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. ~Amy Poehler

Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier. ~Amy Poehler

It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate. ~Amy Poehler

Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself. ~Amy Poehler

How a person treats their waitress is a great indication of their character. ~Amy Poehler

I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things. ~Amy Poehler

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